Denis Bašić, Ph.D. 1 WHAT IS A NATION? The Case of Bosniaks, Croats, & Serbs as the Case for Renan by Denis Bašić, Ph.D. Ernest Renan (1823-1892) The existence of a nation is a daily plebiscite... Forgetting, I would even go so far as to say, historical error is a crucial factor in the creation of a nation. In his lecture delivered at the Sorbonne on March 11, 1882, which was later published as an essay entitled What is a Nation? (Qu’est-ce qu’une nation?), Ernest Renan gave one of the most astute, concise, and convincing answers to this question.1 For more than a century now his answers have directly or indirectly influenced countless works on the subject by political philosophers, sociologist, social psychologist, anthropologists, political scientists, and historians. Among these scholars of nation and nationalism one encounters the names of Ernest Gellner, Eric Hobsbawm, Benedict Anderson, Clifford Geertz, Anthony Smith, and many others. Yet, if one is looking for a summary of the entire 20th century scholarship related to the nation building theory, one could simply return to Renan’s essay. To put it briefly, whereas German writers, like Johann Gottlieb Fichte, defined the nation by objective criteria such as race or ethnic group (das Volk), Renan claimed 1 Ernest Renan, “Qu’est-ce qu’une nation?,” in Oeuvres complètes, (Paris: Calmann-Lévy, 1947-61), vol. I, pp. 887-907, for English translations of the essay see: Ernest Renan, “What is a nation?,” in Becoming National: A Reader, ed. by Geoff Eley and Ronald Grigor Suny, translated by Martin Thom, (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996), pp. 42-55 or Ernest Renan, “What is a nation?,” in Modern Political Doctrines, ed. by Alfred Zimmern, (London, New York, Toronto: Oxford University Press, 1939), pp. 186-205. 2 Denis Bašić, Ph.D. that the usage of these criteria is arbitrary and that the nation is primarily defined by the willfulness to live together. In other words, Renan declared that the existence of a nation was essentially based on a “daily plebiscite” (un plébiscite de tous les jours), positive shared memories, even more importantly common suffering, and, above all, on oblivion.2 Hence, neither race, nor language, nor religion, nor culture, in Renan’s opinion, were deciding factors in the creation of either the German and French nations in the 19th century or of the ancient Greek, Jewish, or Armenian polities. On the following pages, I reexamine the validity of this conclusion by Renan while contrasting and comparing it with the views of other scholars of nationalism and testing their hypotheses on the cases of the Central Western Balkan nations – the Bosniaks, Croats, and Serbs. 1.1. The Problem Of The Tower Of Babel Most scholars would agree that to enter the field of social sciences with a few basic questions regarding the vocabulary pertaining to the theory of the national identity building means to enter the Tower of Babel construction site. The main problem of the scholarship on national identity is that there is a myriad of often confusing definitions of the key terms in the discussion, like nation, ethnicity, state, and nationalism. The term nation is often used as a synonym for the term state. In parallel, there is the term nation-state. Even more importantly, the fine line between the terms nation and ethnicity is often unclear. It is generally assumed that culture defines ethnicity, while politics defines nation. However, it is practically impossible to find a culture that has not been influenced by politics and politics that has not claimed to be protecting a tradition, i.e., a culture. Furthermore, the boundary between nationalism and patriotism is equally blurred, especially in the vocabulary of nationalists. Finally, what one scholar may call a national liberation movement, another 2 Ernest Renan, “Qu’est-ce qu’une nation?” in Oeuvres complètes, p. 891, 903-904; in Becoming National: A Reader, p. 45, 53; in Modern Political Doctrines, p. 190, 202-203. Denis Bašić, Ph.D. 3 may call a nationalist movement, with pejorative connotations. In addition to all of this, there is a problem with translating some terms from one language into another, and especially so in the case of differing political and social systems, such as the East European vs. the West European vs. the American system. The imbroglio of definitions of the key terms in the discussion seems to be at the same time the result and cause of two essential academic debates on nation. The first debate between primordialists and perennialists, on one side, and modernists, on the other, is over the antiquity of nation. In this debate ethnosymbolists try to be somewhere in between, although terminologically speaking, they seem to be closer to the modernists. The second debate is over the nature of ethnic ties between primordialists, perennialists, and ethnosymbolists, on one side, and instrumentalists and constructionists, who are mostly modernists, on the other. It is necessary at the very outset to emphasize that none of the abovementioned schools of thought is totally monolithic, but that their adherents often differ among themselves as to some specific issues. However, there are some essential ideas shared by all supporters within each theory. Due to the limitations of this paper, I shall try to focus only on the main issues of the debates and on the commonly shared opinions within each school. As we shall see, my research on the case of Bosniaks, Croats, and Serbs favors the modernist, instrumentalist, and constructionist views. 1.2. Debate On The Antiquity Of Nation 1.2.1. The Primordialists’ Views One of the two main issues which troubles the researchers of nationhood is the question of the antiquity of nation, i.e., the question of when a nation was born. The primordialists’ view in this regard is very simple and clear. Since primordialists “hold that nationality is a ‘natural’ part of human beings, as natural as speech, sight or smell,” they believe that “nations have existed since time immemorial.”3 3 Umut Özkırımlı, Theories of Nationalism: a Critical Introduction, (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2000), p. 64. 4 Denis Bašić, Ph.D. 1.2.2. The Perennialists’ Views Without subscribing to the view that nation is a result of any kind of primordial or natural ties, Anthony Smith clarifies, some scholars suggest that the nation is a “transhistorical phenomenon, recurring in many periods and continents, irrespective of economics, political, and cultural conditions.”4 Smith names these scholars “perennialists.” The term perennial can equally mean constant, as well as recurrent and as such perfectly applies to both forms of perennialism – the continuous and recurrent perennialism. One of the most prominent representatives of continuous perennialism is Adrian Hastings.5 Hastings believes that nation was born with the birth of written literature in vernacular language. Consequently, in most cases the nation could be considered as being born in the Middle Ages. Hence, Hastings suggests, for instance, that the Anglo-Saxon kingdom of King Alfred and his successors already constituted an English nation that survived in a continuum until today. As much as the invention of the alphabet marked the beginning of history and civilization, analogously, perennialists claim, the appearance of written vernacular literature should be considered a mark of the beginning of national civilizations, i.e., nations. As we can see, perennialists put a lot of stress on language, culture, and religion. Consequently, according to them, the education of people in their vernacular is the key factor in the national identity development process. However, it is highly questionable how much average people of the Middle Ages really wrote and read in their native tongue. I am not referring here to elites, but rather to serfs. The Bosnian medieval historiography 4 Anthony Smith, “Review Article: Ethnic Persistence and National Transformation,” British Journal of Sociology, xxxv (3), 1984, pp. 425-61. Anthony Smith, The Nation in History: Historiographical Debates about Ethnicity and Nationalism, (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2000), p. 34. 5 Adrian Hastings, The construction of nationhood: Ethnicity, religion and nationhood, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), chapter 1. Denis Bašić, Ph.D. 5 does not seem to provide any documents, which would prove a general “high reading culture” at the given time.6 The situation seems to be similar all over Europe. Another continuous perennialist whom I would like to introduce here is Hugh Seton-Watson. Seton-Watson’s views are intriguing, because he evidently applies a double standard in determining the birth of nation. Thus, he agrees with modernists that nation and nationalism, as an ideology and movement, are recent and novel, however, only in the case of “new nations” – Czechs and Slovaks, Rumanians, Bulgarians, Serbs and Croats, Ukrainians, Estonians, Azeris, Kurds, Syrians, Pakistanis, Malaysians, and Indonesians. According to Seton-Watson, these new nations were “created deliberately and often swiftly” as an outcome of treaties after long warfare, such as the Napoleonic wars or World War I. On the other side, “old continuous nations” – France, England, Scotland, Holland, Castile, Portugal, Denmark, Sweden, Poland, Hungary, and Russia – started slowly forming their national identity in the early Middle Ages. As to these “old” nations, Seton-Watson explains that “[the] long process by which in Europe sovereign states arose and nations were formed has its origins in the collapse of the Roman Empire, the attempts to revive imperial power, the slow decay of the revival, and the still slower withering away of its mythology.”7 Theoretically speaking, it could be claimed then that, for instance, the early medieval Bosnian state was also formed after the fall of the Roman Empire and that the country was independent, which could have given her its peculiar character and identity.